The influence of sleep deprivation on athletes' performance: A systematic review

Abstract

Sleeping is an important strategy for athletes' recovery and the state of sleep deprivation can influence the sports performance.The objective of the study was to carry out a systematic literature review in order to analyze the influence of sleep deprivation on the physical and athletic performance of athletes. The study was carried out from the electronic databases PubMed, Scopus, SportDiscus and Scielo. We selected original articles published and written in English or Portuguese were selected. After the search in the databases we found 143 articles were found being 45 from PubMed, 72 from Scopus, 1 from Scielo and 25 from SportDiscus. After the full analysis of the articles, only 8 of them articles were included in the present study according to the inclusion criteria. After analyzing the 8 articles included in the present review it was concluded that sleep deprivation negatively influenced physical and sports performance in 5 of the analyzed articles. In addition, it was found that the sleep deprivation period is determinant for athletes' performance in sports tasks.